De Tout Poil
by TalysAlankil
Summary: Kairi has secret business in the Forbidden Forest, and who but Vanitas would stumble upon it?


"_Now_ I've got you."

Kairi froze at the voice coming from the trees behind her, her heart rate tripling under a rush of adrenaline. "You must _hide_!" she whispered the creature in front of her, turning around rapidly as if she could, with her body alone, hide it from sight.

She would have recognized Vanitas's drawl anywhere. That _he_ of all people would stumble upon her secret—or maybe he'd _followed_ her here?—when he'd spent the entire school year falling further and further off the deep end with those dark-mage-worshipping new friends of his could only mean one thing.

"Sneaking off into the Forbidden Forest at night? You must be stupider than I—" he stopped as his eyes landed behind Kairi. "Is that a fucking _dragon_?" He drew his wand, though Kairi was pretty sure it was only for show, since dragons were impervious to a great deal of magic, as anyone who would have watched the Triwizard Tournament—like they had in their first year at Hogwarts—would have known.

Kairi's first instinct was to beg for him to keep her secret, but when she saw the way his eyes widened with fear, she realized that was the wrong way to go about it. "His name is Shadow," she said, crossing her arms confidently, "and I'm basically his mom. You were saying?"

She couldn't make out the threats Vanitas spouted as he bolted through the woods, and she let out a sigh of relief, turning back to the dragon. "This is bad," she couldn't help but say—she wasn't so foolish as to think he would keep quiet on this subject. "I think—maybe we'll have to part ways sooner than I thought."

The dragon nuzzled her hand, sensing her turmoil, though Kairi doubted he understood. She'd done a lot of reading on the subject of dragons, and while her time interacting with Shadow since she'd found his egg at the start of this school year had taught her they were cleverer than books gave them credit for, she wasn't so foolish as to think he could understand English.

Of course, if Vanitas reported her, maybe someone would take care to take him away in her stead. She just didn't want this to be the way her time together with Shadow ended. He wasn't _ready_ to leave.

She shook her head. No, she decided. She couldn't just take this lying down. So instead, she hurried back to the castle.

Vanitas was nowhere to be found on the path to Hogwarts or in the school proper, but she'd expected as much—he had likely gone straight to the Slytherin common room to avoid being found out past curfew. Sighing, she headed back to the kitchen herself, to the Gryffindor common room, vowing to work things out with him in the morning.

But when morning came, there was no sign of Vanitas in the Great Hall. Kairi kept waiting all day for one of the professors to pull her aside and confront her about raising a dragon in the Forbidden Forest, but it never happened. She was a stressed-out mess by the time evening came, and she chose not to go see Shadow, lest he picked up on her bad mood.

The next day was very much the same—and the next. Vanitas finally reappeared on the fourth day after their encounter in the forest, looking deathly pale, and avoiding to even so much as look at her.

Kairi's first class of the day was Arithmancy, which Gryffindor shared with Slytherin. So when she saw Vanitas coming in the room and taking a seat, she excused herself to Sora and Riku, and all but dashed to the seat next to his.

"What are you _doing_?" Vanitas hissed in a low voice as Professor Vector entered the room.

"We need to talk."

Vanitas attempted a sarcastic laugh, but it ended in a cough. "Oh, _please_ beg. I'd be _delighted_."

"Why are you doing this, Vanitas? Are your new friends really better than we were?"

"You're all my _brother's_ friends. These are _my_ friends. And they have nothing to do with—"

He coughed again, but this time, it grew into a full-blown fit, bad enough for Professor Vector to pause her droning and glare at the two of them. She opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, Vanitas fell off his chair, seizing violently, his eyes rolled so far back into his skull that Kairi could barely see a hint of gold.

She could see purple droplets spilling out the corner of his mouth, too, making her own breath seize in its chest. She jumped off her own chair to kneel by his side, checking his necks and finding his veins tinged a similar—though harder to spot—purple shade. She could spot the mark going down into his collar, to his left shoulder, and when she pulled his sleeve back, found what she'd feared on his forearm: a prickle mark with a distinct star shape.

"He's been sick all week, Professor. I'll take him to the infirmary," she offered. Professor Vector looked at her, stunned, then nodded. Kairi took out her wand, muttered 'Mobilicorpus', and headed out of the classroom, Vanitas hovering behind her.

The heartsbane flower was one of the many things that made the Forbidden Forest…well, Forbidden. Rarer than most dangerous plants in the forest, they were also among the deadliest that grew there—and Shadow had chosen to place his nest close to their growing grounds. Kairi had done her research on all the plants in the area as soon as Shadow had nested there, and she knew to avoid the flowers and their thorns. Vanitas, upon following her, would likely have known nothing about these.

"What're you—" Vanitas said from behind her, his voice weak. He blinked rapidly, trying to focus on her. "Are you _kidnapping_ me?"

Kairi couldn't help but roll her eyes. "You passed out. I'm taking you to the infirmary. But first—"

She'd magically hidden an extra pocket in her bag after Shadow had nested in the Forbidden Forest. Among other supplies, she kept phials of blood she'd drawn from Shadow, as a precaution for herself. Dragon blood was one of the only remedies to the heartsbane's poison, so it had seemed necessary at the time. Not that she'd ever thought she'd need it for someone else, let alone _Vanitas_.

"You got scratched by a heartsbane flower, that night you followed me," she said. "This is the remedy. Dragon blood, from Shadow."

"From—" He blinked again, looking confused. "Oh. _Oh._ I'm not drinking _that_."

"Do you think I _want_ to give that to _you_? I'm trying to save you here. If you're already having seizures—"

Vanitas stared at her silently for a minute. "Why are you doing this?" he asked, suspicious. "You should just let me die. I was gonna report you, you know, if I hadn't gotten sick."

"Yeah, well, I'm not the kind of person who lets a friend die. Even one who became as shitty as you did." She scoffed. "I'm sure your _new_ friends wouldn't understand that."

"You—" He slumped forward, only held up by Kairi's spell, and Kairi almost panicked, thinking he'd fainted—or worse. But he jerked back to awareness just as quickly, staring at her. "You still think of me as your friend?"

She narrowed her eyes. "Debatable. Still, though. I'm not letting you die."

Vanitas looked away. "Okay. Give it to me."

Kairi let out a sigh—of relief, though she wouldn't have admitted it to him—and came closer, helping Vanitas drink from the phial. Almost instantly, the purple receded on his neck, a sign that it was working.

Vanitas sighed too, his face visibly relaxing as the pain faded. "Thanks. Unless you actually poisoned me more, in which case, I hate you." There was no vitriol behind the words, though. "Now can you let go of me? I can walk."

"Are you sure?" The way Vanitas glared at her, Kairi didn't feel like protesting any further, but as she let her spell fade, she wrapped an arm under his shoulder. He tensed at the contact, but leaned against her anyway. "You'll probably need to rest for another day," she said. "And I need to get you to the infirmary either way, in case Professor Vector asks."

"Yeah, I think I belong there anyway."

They slowly made their way down the stairs towards the library, Vanitas only letting his pain show through his labored breathing. Halfway down, however, he scoffed. "This is all your fault, you know. You're the reason I was out there in the forest."

Kairi raised an eyebrow at him in a side-glance. "Oh, _really_."

"Luckily for you, I've decided you can make it up to me. You can just…let me meet him. Your dragon."

He looked at her, but his hesitant gaze belied his cocky words. Kairi couldn't help but smile back.

"You know, if you wanted to hang out again, you could just _ask_."


End file.
